Driving Passion
J.T. Hayes knew one thing about his life as a racer: he meant to lead it as a woman
as Published in People Magazine
Contributed by Elizabeth Parker
 | "I crave the hoopla," says O'Connell (in Watkins Glen, N.Y.). "When you race, it's a big deal." |
Dressed in bell-bottom jeans and a clingy white tank top, fashion model
Terri O'Connell deftly maneuvers a yellow '98 VW Beetle around a tight
corner at the Memphis Motorsports Park, then pulls off the track. "Oh my
mercy!" exclaims the lithe 5'8" beauty from Charlotte, N.C., removing
her helmet and shaking out her strawberry blonde mane. "I've got helmet
hair!"
Vanity aside, O'Connell, 43, is one of the most remarkable competitors on
the racing scene. Not just because she is a woman in what remains a
testosterone-fueled sport— but, rather, because she once was a man. In the
1980s, O'Connell, then known as James Terry (J.T.) Hayes, was a veteran
midget-and-sprint-car driver, pocketing $100,000 a year in prize money and
beating the likes of reigning NASCAR champ Jeff Gordon back when Gordon
was still racing sprints. "He was a racer all the way," says car owner
Junie Donlavey, an elder statesman of the NASCAR circuit. "I thought he
had a good future."
But in all the years he spent rebuilding engines, Hayes secretly longed
for an overhaul on himself. So in 1992, J.T. underwent sex reassignment
surgery and emerged as Terri. "I finally felt whole," O'Connell says now
of her long-awaited transformation. "I was who I should have been all
along."
One thing the operation didn't change: her need for speed. In May, after a
six-year absence in which she changed her name and built a new identity,
O'Connell returned to racing in the One Lap of America competition, an
eight-day, cross-country charity derby that resembles the storied
Cannonball Run. Her performance-she placed 68th in a field of 80, mostly
more powerful cars, including Porsches and Vipers-was impressive. "She did
a good job out there," says Car and Driver magazine editor-at-large Brock
Yates. "She handled herself in a very competent manner."
For O'Connell the event "was like coming home." As for her fellow drivers,
"They just treated me like a lady," she says.
 | J.T. (at 4) and mother Kate hit the beach in Biloxi, Miss. |
Which, as O'Connell tells it, is what she always felt she was. Growing up
in Corinth, Miss., a conservative, working-class town of about 12,000,
some 90 miles southeast of Memphis, O'Connell says she "was never
comfortable as a boy." The only child of Jim Hayes, now 70, a onetime
tool-and-die-shop owner and weekend racing-car driver, and his wife, Kate,
66, a former telephone factory supervisor, J.T. was fascinated by things
usually thought of as female. At school, he was chastised by teachers for
playing jump rope with the girls, and at home, recalls O'Connell, "I'd get
caught going through my mother's drawer and putting on her bras and
panties."
So J.T. covered up. "I became a little rougher, a little more athletic,"
O'Connell says. As a youth, he played baseball and basketball and dated
girls, though there was never any physical intimacy. Hoping to win his
father's approval, J.T. also threw himself into car racing, the only
"masculine" pursuit he enjoyed. In his 20s, he was breaking track records
for midget and sprint cars. "But I not only wanted to be A.J. Foyt," says
O'Connell, "I wanted to be Marilyn Monroe too."
Risky ambitions, both. In his senior year in high school, his mother
discovered a stash of women's clothes under his bed and sent him to a
psychiatrist. "We spent a fortune trying to get things straightened out,"
she recalls. "It didn't work." After graduation in 1974, J.T. spent the
next several years living between Corinth and Memphis, where he raced
three nights a week-and also began living as a woman, shaving his body
hair and taking female hormone pills.
In 1981, J.T. suffered a concussion and a broken ankle at the Houston
Astrodome, when his midget car slammed into a wall at nearly 100 mph after
its steering mechanism failed. But his injuries weren't his greatest
concern. "I was worried about [the paramedics] seeing the lacy panties I
had on," says O'Connell, "and the pink nail polish I hadn't quite gotten
off my toes."
 | Marrying Pam Thompson in 1986 way "stupid," admits O'Connell |
Not long thereafter, he told his parents in a letter that he wanted to
change his sex. While Kate tried to be understanding, Jim refused to speak
to his son. "He thought it was something [J.T.] could have controlled,"
Kate says. Fearing that news of his lifestyle would hamper his advancing
career, J.T. taped down his hormone-induced breasts when he raced and, in
1986, entered into a sham marriage with a friend, Pam Thompson, a lesbian
U.S. Marine who wanted to conceal her sexuality from the Corps. "She
needed a cover; I needed a cover," explains O'Connell. They split up after
just 2 1/2 months and were ultimately divorced.
Eventually, J.T. tired of the charade. In Corinth he began to dress
publicly as a woman-much to his father's distress-and began hatching plans
to raise the $20,000 he would need for the operation. At meets, some
racers responded frostily to J.T.'s new persona, but strangers were none
the wiser. "They'd come up and say, 'You know, for a girl, you race pretty
good,' " says O'Connell.
By 1991, J.T.'s relationship with his father had thawed a little and, with
Jim's reluctant consent, he sold a midget race car they owned together to
finance his surgery. On March 11, 1992, the day after racing his final
midget car meet in Memphis with his father, J.T. loaded up his Mazda Miata and drove 923 miles to Mount San Rafael
Hospital in Trinidad, Colo., to face the 2 1/2-hour procedure alone. A
week or so later, J.T. returned to Corinth physically, this time, as a
woman. "I was happy," she says.
"But I knew things were going to be different."
 | "I love her as much today as ever. A mother's love never changes,"" says Kate (with Terri) |
Beginning with her troubled relationship with Jim. "He was cool before,"
says O'Connell. "But after I had the surgery, it was almost as if he
despised me." Unable to make amends, she changed her name— choosing
O'Connell to reflect her Irish ancestry and moved to Charlotte, where she
could live in anonymity. O'Connell sold purses at a department store and
started her own graphic design company before becoming a part-time model
in 1995, appearing in local print and television ads. In all that time she
revealed her past only to the two men she dated - one of whom she saw for
18 months. Then, in July 1997, O'Connell told her story in a local
 | "I'm not letting the world push me into a closet,"" says O'Connell (at a Tennesse track). |
newspaper. "People think all transsexuals are 6'2", have big arms and are
ugly," she says of her decision to come out. "Someone had to speak up."
The move cost her a couple of modeling jobs, but O'Connell hopes to have
better luck attracting sponsors to finance her return to race-car driving
by the time the Indy Racing League's Las Vegas 500k revs up in October.
Indeed, her sex change just might help her win a ride. "Professional
racing isn't solely about talent these days," says Jack Arute, who has
covered auto racing for ABC for 14 years. "Every driver has to be a
salesman as well as a fast guy. Everybody has to have a hook." Though
O'Connell could find an enthusiastic constituency among the nearly 40
percent of NASCAR fans who are female, she will ultimately be judged on
her driving. "It will all boil down," says Arute, "to whether she can get
the job done on the track."
Meanwhile, O'Connell, who currently lives with friends in Charlotte, has
begun to patch things up with her father, who doesn't mind being seen with
her these days, even in Corinth. Still, her latest ambition may further
test his equanimity. "I'd love to be married, with 2.5 kids and a picket
fence," says O'Connell, with a sigh. "I believe in family values, probably
more than most people do."
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